The 18-Year-Old Redesigning the Starting Line for Women

Everyone knows how the race between the tortoise and the hare ends. The hare, confident in his speed, becomes careless. The tortoise continues steadily and wins. For generations, the story has taught children that perseverance can matter more than talent.

But 18-year-old Shiyu “Eve” Chen is interested in a question the fable leaves unanswered: what makes a race fair before it even begins?

As Eve sees it, two competitors can stand behind the same painted line and still enter entirely different races. One may arrive after years of expert coaching, professional equipment, and informed encouragement. The other may have trained alone, without the same resources, guidance, or confidence. The starting line looks equal. Their opportunity to succeed is not.

Growing up with the story, Eve began to think less about who crossed the finish line first and more about what each competitor had been given beforehand. That distinction now shapes AmbiThrive. The educational project she founded to address barriers faced by underprivileged girls and young women.

To Eve, talent and determination are only part of success. A young woman may have an excellent business idea, but without access to technology, practical skills, or professional guidance, she may struggle to turn it into something others can see or support. Equality may offer everyone the same opening; equity asks whether they are equally prepared to use it.

Eve turned that philosophy into a structured plan for action. As AmbiThrive’s founder, she designed a 12-step framework, developed resources, and created a public-facing platform showing how underprivileged girls and young women could strengthen the skills needed to participate in the digital economy and work towards financial independence.

She designed the project around a problem she believes is often overlooked: a promising idea can remain invisible when its creator has never been taught how to communicate or develop it. In her view, a young woman may have the ambition to build a socially minded enterprise, but struggle to take the first step without digital knowledge, financial literacy or the confidence to present her ideas.

The pathway begins with community outreach, orientation and foundational computer skills before progressing to goal-setting, digital marketing, teamwork and practical application. Later stages introduce resilience, mentorship and professional networks, guiding participants towards online enterprises that address community needs.

Entrepreneurship sits at the center of the model, but Eve sees the skills as having wider value. Knowing how to write a formal email, shape a proposal, use online tools safely, manage money and explain an idea clearly could also support young women pursuing employment, education or other paths.

For Eve, confidence is not something girls should simply be told to have. It is something they can build by learning, practicing and applying what they know.

“When we equip girls with digital skills, confidence and community, we don’t just open doors—we help them build their own,” she says.

That belief is reflected in Eve’s experiences beyond the project. As founder and president of her school’s Economics Society, she created a space for students to explore economics outside the classroom, discuss current issues and prepare for competitions. She says the society showed her how structure and community can help students develop their interests, exchange ideas and grow in confidence.

A work-experience program with Airwallex added a commercial perspective. While researching Mexico’s fintech market and contributing to a market-entry strategy, Eve says she learned that an effective plan cannot rely on data alone. It must also consider what people need, what they can access, and how a market operates in practice.

She says that lesson influenced her approach to AmbiThrive. Rather than treating gender inequality as a problem that encouragement alone could solve, Eve designed the framework around practical barriers that may prevent women from acting on their ambitions.

A major milestone in bringing the project into public view came in January 2025, when Eve was invited as an official youth delegate to the UNESCO International Day of Education Conference and Youth Assembly at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. The gathering formed part of the 2025 LearningPlanet Festival, bringing young people into conversation with UNESCO representatives, educators and industry leaders about education’s future. Interacting with girls from different parts of the world also broadened Eve’s perspective, showing her that barriers to educational opportunity were not limited to one country or culture, but appeared in different forms across communities.

Representing AmbiThrive, Eve presented its vision and was interviewed about the ideas behind the platform. The opportunity placed her work on an international stage and allowed her to connect its focus on digital and financial literacy with a wider discussion about how education can respond to young people’s needs.

For Eve, the experience reflected the principle at the center of her framework. Access to knowledgeable people, supportive networks and spaces where she could discuss her ideas strengthened her thinking. Her project is designed to make similar forms of access more available to girls and young women who may not otherwise receive them.

Eve’s aim is not to prescribe a single future for every young woman. Instead, the framework is designed to expand their choices by mapping the practical skills, guidance and networks that she believes opportunity often requires.

She is not trying to guarantee who wins the race. She is challenging the assumption that standing behind the same line means everyone has entered it equally prepared. By designing a framework around the tools that opportunity often demands, Eve is attempting to redesign the starting line so that where someone begins does not have to determine how far she can go.